and all the stories buried there

like sacristies. People will float

like birds, fish will glitter, every cave

and waterfall a musical instrument –

a place too good to be true,

a place the navigators were searching for,

the home of their dreams,

only in their dreams.

And when I woke I was in my study typing.

Waka 84

I am the waka of memory,

unnamed, the template –

place me:

in Hawaiiki

in vehicles

in the mountains reefs cliffs

whare nui trees boulders

in the words of the world Maori

I am the waka made a tree again

by a huge chrysalis of insects

by clearing the marks of humans

anger of these humans in particular

to be free in a forest

without the deadweight of this crew

oh I must feel sad for them

but it is hard being a waka alone

better to be a tree in a forest

a life marked by the chopping of tui

instead of adzes

Waka 85

I am the star Kopua,

Venus to the colonials

and their explorers. I watched their tube eyes

watch me, one eye at a time.

…

We are cousins of Kopua,

Maahutonga, Southern Cross.

We have many points

and have been used throughout ages

belonging to humans

and creatures on other planets.

Light travels slowly

from great distances. So

our deliberation helped the navigators

travel quickly and safely to their homelands.

Sometimes we are obscured by clouds

and the navigators rely on other skills

such as translating the ripples

made when waves touch land

into a direction

Waka 86

I am Kupe. I have the credit for finding

this new land, the parts of which

I named with parts of me, including

my son – I have left my son here,

the gods were appeased.

My soul will never forget this.

I have been quoted many times,

e hoki a Kupe? Did Kupe return?

The saying is meant to politely

refuse a request. But I do

return to this land. Thoughts

I placed here keep returning

to my ears. I am sorry

for correcting the saying,

but I have been returning

for a very long time now.

Waka 87

I am the anonymous settler

fresh off the boat from Bristol,

arrived from a developed land

where the landscape

is landscaped, seating churches

and palaces, melodious clock towers,

aristocrats and Ascot, a land

where everything

has a place including the people.

Here we have tents and take food

from savages. The town is squatter

than Sydney. The English do not know

their stations any more.

My family will spend the next

century building this country

into a new England, and building

the mythology of England as home.

Waka 88

Do not mind the settler. I observe

the rules of this mythology (see how he did not

place a star or ocean or a waka

in his pageantry). I am Odysseus,

summoned to these pages by extraordinary

claims of the narrator. I run through all narratives.

Dr Jung put me there early in the century.